


Scared of the Dark

by allthegoodnamesaretakendammit



Series: The Boys of Magnolia Crescent [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action, Angst, Drama, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slow Build, Veritaserum, end of book 4, endgame snarry - Freeform, snarry, terrorism and so forth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-11-19 07:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18132767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit/pseuds/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit
Summary: The Third Task is a trial. Just… not in the way that Harry expected.





	Scared of the Dark

 

Priori Incantatem is a unique kind of hell: a shimmering golden dome occasionally lit up by the fizzle of every _Reparo_ and _Lumos_ Harry has ever cast. The cage of light keeps him from going anywhere on his busted ankle, to say nothing of the thread of light that ties his and Voldemort’s wands together. The ghosts of the old gardener, Cedric, Lily, and James pace around the inside of the dome, counterclockwise to the prowling Death Eaters outside. They are smokey figures, all of them.

But then again, _everything_ pales next to the fire formed by their wands--even the beginnings of fear on Voldemort’s face. For the first time, Harry understands that name: _vol de mort._ He pieces it together from the smattering of French he’d learned in grade school and it makes him grip his wand tighter.

No one can fly in a cage. At least, not very far.

“Let go, Harry!” his mother calls from where she circles behind him, her voice familiar from the single memory he has of her. “ _Let go!_ ”

Harry doesn’t let go.

Every moment that passes, a new spark and shadow shoots from the tip of Voldemort’s wand. By the time a ghostly face emerges from the wisps of smoke, the yew wand is already glowing with the next one. And as soon as they have their legs under them, the figures crawl or walk to the rest of their ranks at the edge of the dome.

It was its own kind of hell to watch it happen, here, at the eye of the storm. And that storm was beginning to shrink, the cloudbank coiling tighter. The ghosts are from every walk of life, from every conceivable continent: men with dark skin and tired eyes, bespectacled witches, muggle children with tears trailing down their faces, pale women in short skirts, babies still sucking on pacifiers, and a whole host of cockroaches and birds and collarless dogs. As one, they circle the duelists at the center of the dome. It sets a chill on Harry’s spine to see their numbers swell, but he swallows down his fear.

They’re not here for him.

Slowly, they move away from the edges of the dome and begin to circle Voldemort exclusively. Still more of them are slipping out of his wandtip, beginning to slink around his feet. By the time there are fifty of them, the children’s hands are clutching at the hem of Voldemort’s robe, the men take him by the shoulders, and the women wrap their arms around his waist. The whites of Voldemort’s eyes are stark, both hands tight on his wand as the darkness closes in on him.

Woven around Voldemort like that, their bodies are packed in close enough that they look like a single, solid presence. Still, Harry could swear that it's his mum who finally heaves the whole mass of them closer to the wand itself. A strange thing begins to happen, then: their smokey bodies unspool as the come into contact with the wandtip. It seems to suck them back into the wandcore like a vacuum, reducing them to a thin dark stream before drawing them back in. One smokey river going in and one golden beam still going out.

If Harry were worried that they would all vanish and leave him alone with Voldemort and a ravenous pack of Death Eaters, then he needn’t be. The remaining ghosts bear themselves against Voldemort’s back in waves, shoving him forward until he’s close enough to get sucked into his own wand, too. Roped in by mist and years’ old magic, his body vanishes head-first. He goes out of the world the way he came in: thin and lonely and dark, with a whole host of the dead trailing in his wake.

Harry swallows against the dry feeling in his mouth as his parents disappear with the rest. Yet, for a moment, the yew wand still hovers in mid-air where Voldemort had been holding it. Then the golden beam finally sputters to a stop and the whole wand splinters with a crack of light. The golden dome comes crashing down and disappears with a few last whispers of light as the wood-splinters hit the grass. They’re smoking a little, but the weeds underneath them never seem to catch flame. The Death Eaters stand frozen in a ring, unmoving even though the dome has fallen at last. They stare in silence at the little bits of wood that their lord and master has left behind.

Well. There's only one thing left to do.

Heart pounding, Harry sets the grass under their feet aflame with three rapid-fire _Incendios_ as he makes a break for the Tri-Wizard Cup--shining on the ground just a few yards away. He can’t even feel the pain in his leg as he races toward it, the Death Eaters just beginning to shift out of their dumbstruck silence and raising their wands.

The cup is right by the foot of a tall one--who Harry would bet anything is Lucius Malfoy. Harry runs behind a cluster of headstones that blocks the first few bolts of green light, and he keeps moving behind his cover as he shouts, “ _Impedimenta!_ ” His wand is slippery in his sweaty grip and the spell is only strong enough to send Maybe-Lucius lurching backwards in slow motion.

The cup is so near now, and Harry makes a lunge for it just as one of the biggest Death Eaters tackles him hard. Harry slams into the ground stomach-first, his hand touching the cool handle of the cup at the same moment that Maybe-Lucius’ foot grazes it.

There’s a jarring rush of air, a hook behind his navel, and a thud as he hits the ground even harder.

Screams, spellfire, and the sound of trumpets playing triumphantly before ending abruptly. The Death Eaters must have come along with him, then.

Harry lays there, face down on the ground and letting the world happen around him. Soon enough, there is the thump of one body falling heavily beside him, and then another.

Pandemonium. The whispers of:  _Death Eaters. Just look at them!_

Then there is a hand on his back and Dumbledore’s voice asking, “Harry, are you alright?”

Harry raises his head just enough to see that it is, indeed, Dumbledore--sharp blue eyes, grave expression, and all. Something horrible lodges itself in his throat. “Cedric,” Harry tells him. “His body’s still in the graveyard.”

A choked sound comes from behind him, and Harry closes his eyes against the bright stadium lights. He hears Dumbledore move away only to have Madame Pomfrey fill his space, the scent of antiseptic and blood-replenishing potions perfuming the air around her. Somewhere nearby, a man is groaning, “Cedric, my Cedric--he _can’t_ be!” And then Madame Pomfrey is turning Harry over so that she can fret over his arm and leg properly, the sound of shouting and furious whispering coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

It’s probably the blood loss and the adrenaline drop, but Harry just kind of… checks out for awhile.

When Harry next opens his eyes, it’s to see Dumbledore kneeling by him again. Dumbledore opens his mouth to ask a question, his eyes urgent--but Harry finds himself already answering him. “Voldemort’s dead. Probably not for very long.” His voice sounds terrible and rough, like he'd been arguing for a long time. As if from a great distance, he watches Madame Pomfrey spell the gash on his arm clean and start knitting it back together with nothing more than her wand and a furrow in her brow. “There were about twenty other Death Eaters,” he goes on, glancing at the bound bodies lying a few feet from him on either side. “Don’t touch the Cup. It’s a Portkey to a graveyard in Little Whinging.”

At a gesture from Dumbledore’s hand, McGonagall and what looks like Dedalus Diggle peel off from the crowd and stride off into the night on some errand. “Is there anything else, Harry? Anything we must know?” Dumbledore urges as Madame Pomfrey moves onto Harry’s ankle, her wand criss-crossing over it while she mutters under her breath--perhaps a spell and perhaps a swear.

Harry licks his dry lips and tries to think. “He said… he said his most faithful servant was still out here somewhere.”

Dumbledore immediately lifts his head and begins to search the crowd, seeming to scan every face for a trace of guilt or anguish. There were hundreds of people present, many of them in uproar, and he seemed to search them all.

At last, his eyes land on Professor Moody, who is barking at Flitwick: “Fetch the Aurors! And you there, keep the crowd back!” When Moody turns and finds Dumbledore’s eyes on him, he just stares right back and growls, “We’ll be needing the Aurors to round up these two and then to weed out the rest.”

Dumbledore rises to his feet, seeming taller than ever as he takes a step toward Moody and says, “Tell me, Alastor: where were you on the night of August 31st, 1979?”

“St. Mungo’s,” Moody bites out, reaching into his coat pocket.

It's Snape’s spell that strikes him from behind, a silent _Petrificus Totalus_ that has Moody landing flat on his face on the ground, as still as stone. Snape stares down at him, white-faced and with his eyes blazing. “Moody would never sleep somewhere with so many windows,” he says through gnashing teeth, seeming just a second away from tearing off the face of the man in front of him, if only to see who was underneath.

Harry watches it all from the ground, still in a daze.

As effortlessly as if he did it every day, Dumbledore transfigures a few blades of grass into a length of rope and spells it into tight knots around Moody’s arms and legs, then Flitwick lifts him off the ground with a well-timed _Levicorpus._ They did the same to the Death Eaters lying on either side of Harry--who wished very much that he could clear the mist out of his mind long enough to appreciate how stupid the three of them look hanging in midair. When Flitwick slips their masks off with a charm, there is a hundredfold cry of _Lucius Malfoy!_ and _Macnair!_ echoing through the crowd.

Dumbledore turns where he stands and under the din, he says to Harry, “The Aurors will be here any moment. Will you consent to be dosed with truth potion, Harry? I sense you have quite a tale to tell, and it may be the only way they’ll believe you.”

Harry can already taste it on his tongue: plain as water, as true as anything. “Alright,” he says, the word as dry as his mouth feels.

After all, he wasn’t the one who’d be struggling to swallow it all.

 


End file.
